Canadian conductor Naomi Woo is gaining worldwide attention for her spirited dynamism and infectious musicality both on and off the podium. A widely sought-after symphonic and operatic conductor, Woo is currently in her second season as Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In the 2025/26 season, Woo makes debuts with the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Royal Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden. She also returns to Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, where she was artistic partner from 2023 to 2025, as well as to the Vancouver Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic and City of London Sinfonia. A renowned advocate for contemporary music she conducts the world premiere of Oliver Leith’s Garland at Bold Tendencies in London and leads a workshop for Huang Ruo’s upcoming opera The Wedding Banquet at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
In previous seasons, Woo has appeared with Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Montreal Symphony, and National Arts Centre Orchestra in North America and elsewhere with London’s Philharmonia, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Orchestre de Chambre de Luxembourg, and at LSO St. Luke’s in London with the ensemble Tangram Sound, an ensemble devoted to celebrating the vitality of Chinese cultures, and creating new music by transnational Chinese creators.
On the opera stage, she has conducted the Canadian premiere of Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Angel’s Bone in Vancouver, Puccini Edgar at Opera Holland Park, Rossini La Cenerentola with English Touring Opera, and the world premiere of Ellis Ludwig-Leone The Night Falls in New York City. Recognised for her collaborative approach and natural command for storytelling and language, Woo has conducted more than a dozen operas with students and young professionals in US and the UK, and collaboratively created new, genre-bending operatic works with Sasha Amaya and Catherine Kontz (A Certain Sense of Order), Sophie Seita (Beethoven Was a Lesbian), and Alex Ho/Julia Cheng.
A passionate educator, Woo was the music director of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada for their 2024 and 2025 seasons and is the former music director of El Sistema Winnipeg. As a pianist, she has led performances from the piano with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony, and others.
Woo holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She has also studied mathematics, philosophy, and music at Yale College, the Yale School of Music, and Université de Montréal. The 2022 winner of the Canada Council’s prestigious Virginia Parker Prize, Woo is a member of Tapestry Opera’s Women in Musical Leadership programme and was chosen by her mentor Yannick Nézet-Séguin as a member of the Orchestre Métropolitain’s inaugural orchestral conducting academy. She acknowledges generous support over the years from the Manitoba Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Help Musicians UK, and the BC Arts Council.
Leonardo R. Soto, Jr. was appointed Principal Timpanist of the Houston Symphony in 2018. Before arriving to Houston, Leo served as Principal Timpanist of the Charlotte Symphony from 2009 to 2018, and the Michigan Opera Theatre-Detroit Opera House from 2003 to 2009. He was also an active member of Miami’s Nu-Deco ensemble.
Leo has the unique distinction of being the first native Hispanic Timpanist to play in a major orchestra in the United States.
As an educator, Leonardo was faculty at Queens University of Charlotte as well as Artist in residence at Central Piedmont College, and an instructor for the Charlotte Youth Symphony program. As a clinician, he has taught master classes including PASIC’s Pennsylvania day of percussion, the University of North Carolina, Eastern Michigan University, Filarmónica Joven de Colombia, University of Georgia, Rice University, University of Houston, Universidad de Antioquia de Colombia and schools throughout South America. Leo often travels back to his native Chile to perform recitals, master classes and clinics at the National University of Chile, the Youth Symphony Foundation and the National Symphony.
Leonardo has appeared as a soloist with the Charlotte Symphony, Amarillo Symphony and the Houston Symphony. In January 2017 he performed the world premiere of “Evolution Percussion Concerto,” written for him by composer Leonard Mark Lewis.
He began his musical education at the University of Chile and was the recipient of the Teatro Municipal of Santiago National Scholarship. Concurrently, he was trained as a Latin percussionist by his father, Mr. Leonardo Soto, Sr., one of Chile’s most prominent musicians in the field. Leo embarked on his professional career with the Santiago Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Chile, where he gained experience in orchestral, opera and ballet repertoire. In 1997, he received the Fundación Andes International Scholarship, which brought him to the US and Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied with Timpanist Timothy Adams from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He was made an honorary student at Cleveland State University by Tom Freer of the Cleveland Orchestra.
Leonardo has worked with ensembles such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, City Music Cleveland, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Toledo Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, among others. As a Latin percussionist, he has recorded and toured with a number of artists from the Pennsylvania, Southern Michigan and New York areas.
